2006 Domaine Cecile Tremblay Echézeaux Grand Cru

Tremblay's 2006 Echezeaux du Dessus (three barrels – as with other crus here, only one-third new – and all from destemmed fruit) combines cedar, brown spices, citrus oils, and toasted coconut with dried cherry. Firm, surprisingly viscous, and palpably dense on the palate, it is underlain with meat stock as well as with chalk that seems to "cool down" the pungent spice and warmly ripe, lightly-desiccated fruit. Fortunately, there is an ample sense of glycerin here to help ameliorate the fine-grained but insistent abrasion of tannin. This strikes me as Echezeaux looking toward Clos Vougeot. In the final analysis, though, I find the yet more striking pungency of the village Vosne and its abundance of fresh fruit juiciness more convincing. It will be fascinating to follow this for at least 6-8 years and see whether its formidable structure will be justified by the evolution of its flavors. Unfortunately, Tremblay was not able to access the fruit this year that supplied her two precious barrels of 2005 Vosne-Romanee Beaumonts. "Given the amount and character of tannin in 2006," reports Cecile Tremblay, "a lot of changes had to be made" in handling to guarantee extraction of pure fruit and the encouragement of depth and textural polish, notably the gentleness of both pressing and maceration. (I had to offer Tremblay – and now do my readers – an apology for stating in my detailed report in issue 171 that she and Pascal Roblet were married. That was never the case – although I am not the only person to have made this mistake – and in any event the two have now gone their separate wine ways. Tremblay crushed her most recent vintage at cellars in her home town of Vosne-Romanee.) Importer: Weygandt-Metzler, Unionville, PA; tel. (610) 486-0800